


Time to be

by Johnny_Roundy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-15
Updated: 2021-01-15
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:13:33
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 884
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28775889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Johnny_Roundy/pseuds/Johnny_Roundy
Summary: After finally winning against God, Team Free Will is tired. They just want to rest and process everything that's happened. They start talking and Dean opens up how he was raised to be a sort of man he has no interest in being. Now that he and Cas are together and he doesn't have to hide anything anymore, maybe he doesn't have to be that man anymore. Bit by bit, with all the free will he now has, Dean Winchester is finally becoming his own person.
Relationships: Castiel & Dean Winchester, Castiel/Dean Winchester
Kudos: 11





	Time to be

**Author's Note:**

> There are mentions of Dean's abuse, nothing at all graphic, but it's mentioned, as well as a brief mention of Dean's first solo hunt on his 17th birthday.
> 
> Read on tumblr: https://lucasllalemant.tumblr.com/post/640405037298958336/cant-stop-picturing-sam-dean-and-cas-finally
> 
> Thank you to Tara for being my beta reader.

Can’t stop picturing Sam, Dean and Cas finally getting true free will after all they’ve been through for it, and realizing that after the lives they’ve had, the thing they want the most now is just to Be. Nowhere to go, nothing they’re supposed to do, no orders to follow. Just being there in each other’s presence, finally processing the last decades and everything that happened. And during that time they just sit there and chat, about all sorts of things. And eventually it leads to Dean talking about his childhood and his teenage years. And Dean never talks about himself like that so Sam and Cas immediately sit up straight and start listening very attentively. Cas has a hand on Dean’s knee, silently saying “I’m here, by your side. He can’t hurt you.”

And Dean and Cas are a couple now, officially, since last week. So Dean turns to Cas and (semi)jokingly says “he’d kill me if he knew about us”. Sam pauses. He’s known about Dean for a long time. Not always, but he’s known. “Are you strictly into dick now?”, the looks when he was the third wheel between Dean and Cas...he knew the whole time, right? And he knew it was a complicated matter for Dean. But he never fully understood how it got that way. And I keep thinking of all those little moments where Sam revealed all the things from their childhood that he didn’t remember, things about how Dean was raised, about how they basically had different fathers a lot of the time, and how Dean reacted to Sam not remembering those things. And I keep imagining how it would go if Dean started talking about all that internalized homophobia swimming around in his head drowning out everything else and Sam acted like he genuinely didn’t know where it had come from. So he’d explain, because now he can. Things are more ordered in his mind now that his feelings for Cas are out in the world, roaming free through his veins, controlling his hand to put it over Cas’s and keep it there. He holds Cas’s hand tighter as he explains how he got beat up whenever he cried, just like Sam, but it was different with him. The message for Sam was “be what I think is a better man”, whereas the one for Dean was “if you don’t stop becoming who you’re becoming, you’re not a man. be one”. He talks about his 17th birthday and the message that sent, loud and clear: loving a man is Not Allowed. Kill it with fire. He talks about how he went on to “do stuff” with men throughout his life, “but never love. That was off limits”. Cas has seen these scars in Dean’s soul, he knows all this already. But having seen Dean’s wounds isn’t the same as knowing how he felt them. But he knows this. The way none of them is even saying his name, just He did and He said and He would. Cas knows this all too well. He hates it. He holds Dean’s hand tighter. This is all new for Sam.

“Ten years we could have been together and I didn’t even let myself try to have that because of all the bullshit he drilled into my head. Ten more years we could have had. Ten years I could have been happy, maybe. Guess I’ll never know.” He’d like to make him have to live with that but he’d probably be proud, Dean thinks. For ten extra years he was almost the son his father wanted. He was almost the son he tried way too hard to make him believe he had. Dean still feels his own father living inside him. His presence makes him heavier, and the worst part is it’s not even him, it’s a distorted version of him. Kill it with fire. But how do you kill a dead man’s legacy? Killing God was easier. Maybe because Dean never believed him.

"I’m damaged goods”, Dean says, looking Cas in the eye. “I don’t know if I can do this. I know you know that and still love me-” his voice breaks. “but i mean I don’t know how to do this. I know I love you but I don’t know how to do it. I don’t know if I can.”

There’s a moment of silence. Cas holds Dean’s face in his hands and kisses him ever so gently, and Dean grabs Cas’s hand and keeps holding on to it while Sam just puts his hand on his brother’s shoulder because he doesn’t know what else to do. When Dean and Cas are alone in their room, they sit on the bed next to eachother and Cas already knows what’s gonna happen. He opens his arms and Dean leans into him, nuzzles his face in Cas’s chest and starts crying, and Cas gently says “it’s ok” and “I’m here” but he doesn’t say “sshh” because he knows Dean needs to let it all out. Eventually he falls asleep. The next day he’s a bit closer to feeling like he can become the man he was never allowed to be. That’s what he’s doing with his free will. It’s harder than it looks, but he’ll get there.


End file.
